Arts & Crafts: Crayon Painting

Crayon painting makes the perfect arts and crafts for your little ones. Watch the amazement in their eyes when they see their old crayons melt. This can also be used as a teaching point focusing on the different states of matter and how solids can become liquids.

Materials:

Old crayons

Silicone muffin/pop pan such as this one

Inexpensive Paint Brushes- they will be waxy afterwards

Eye Droppers

Paper or small canvas panels

Oven

Instructions:

Step One Preheat your oven to 275 degrees

Step Two Peel the paper off your old crayons, break them into pieces, and sort into color families. Place the sorted crayon bits into each section of your muffin pan.

Step Three Place muffin pan and crayons in the oven for 15-20 minutes or until crayons are completely melted.

Step Four Remove muffin pan and place on table. You can begin painting right away with the melted crayons. The silicone baking dish should cool down within a minute or so out of the oven. It will still be warm but not burning hot. In any case it’s a good idea to instruct your children NOT to touch the silicone muffin pan. You should also warn them that the wax is hot so don’t touch it.

Step Five Use the melted wax like paint. You can paint with brushes and/or use eye droppers with the melted crayons. I recommend eye droppers for older children ONLY since younger children might not have the fine motor control to keep drops of wax off their skin. The melted crayons will remain workable for about 10-15 minutes. After that they will start to cool and harden.

Step Six Let the paintings completely dry. It will take about 30 minutes.

Tips/Cleaning:

Protect little arms from hot wax by having your child wear long sleeves.

Clean the dried wax off you paintbrushes by placing them in a jar of boiling water. Swish them around to remove the wax and dab on paper towels.

When completely dry, any remaining wax can be flaked off the brushes by rubbing the bristels between your fingers.

Eye droppers can be cleaned by soaking in boiling water then pushing out the warm crayon using the end of a paint brush.

Once completely dry the crayon painting will be “brittle” and warping the paper will cause the large pools of crayon to pop off, leaving behind a translucent colored area on the original paper. If you want to save the completely melted crayon project for display consider painting on small canvas panels instead of paper.

Don’t use the silicone baking dish for food after this. I have a dedicated silicone pan just for art projects. Once the wax is dry, the remaining bits of melted crayon can actually be popped out of the dish.